MelissathePooh
Disney Regular
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2000
- Messages
- 2,414
We were at WDW from May 23 - June 6. A little background - my family took me every year starting in 1973. We were Magic Kingdom Club members until it eventually morphed into Disney Visa. Now as an adult with my own family we are DVC members, AP holders - visit Disney 3-4 times a year for the past 15 years. I think I have basically seen almost every big change/growth spurt WDW has gone through as far back as I can remember.
Our first FP+/Magicband experience was MLK weekend this past January. Disney had just opened it up to all resorts. We had a disaster of an experience - huge lines, app never worked, bands glitched, basically horrible all around. Our biggest concern was the increased lines more than anything. We figured they would get the system glitches worked out, but realized that by adding fp+ to so many attractions that had never had it so there would be something to offer as a fp+, it was almost like an artificial demand was created for certain attractions. We also felt like the number of fp+ that were given out had increased as the fp+ return line on several attractions was beyond anything we had ever seen at any time of year.
Outside of not wanting to micromanage our vacations (we stopped really planning years ago), we just didn't like it and had an overall negative experience with it.
Fast forward to this past trip we went with as open a mind as possible. Again not a fan of having to plan everything out so far in advance (even caused arguments at home trying to devise our plan), but we did it and then the system blocked us, said we had limits that we shouldn't have had and in trying to fix the issues, DVC's intervention erased all of our reservations... It didn't start off with much hope of changing our opinion.
That said - we went and as anticipated the app worked better than before. Not great and we got multiple "blips" in the app and it was slow as Christmas, but way better than MLK weekend. We only had 2 band issues where it dropped our charging privileges once and wouldn't open the room on a second occasion. Considering we had 9 people with us the second week of the trip it wasn't too bad.
I really did like not having to rush to any park knowing that we didn't have to be anywhere until of first return time - that was nice. BUT if we had wanted to do more than our 3 headliners we would had to have gotten there by rope drop (which we don't do). We didn't have any luck with 4th fp+ mostly due to our group size and the tiering system at Studios and Epcot. We didn't really try to do much besides our reserved rides - if we had we would have been waiting in a ton of lines.
So my final opinion is...meh. I don't hate it like I did after MLK weekend, but I don't love it either. I really do think that if you want to really do the parks you have to hit rope drop. Since we aren't that family anymore what we can see and do has been limited. Crowd levels impact this of course, but with kids in schools when we can go is more limited. I really do think that fp+ has created longer lines for stand by and fp return. We experienced long fp+ return lines on virtually every attraction at every park - longer than there EVER was with fp-. I will say I still do not like the tiering system - if MK ever goes to that it will be a nightmare.
Ultimately I think it boils down to how a family likes to "do" Disney. We don't plan like crazy or go rope drop to park close so for us this hasn't been an improvement. I can see that for some folks it would be great. It isn't anything that will make us sell our DVC or what not, but I do see us doing other things and using our points other places. Overall I really have been disappointed in Disney lately, but that is a diatribe for a different day.
Our first FP+/Magicband experience was MLK weekend this past January. Disney had just opened it up to all resorts. We had a disaster of an experience - huge lines, app never worked, bands glitched, basically horrible all around. Our biggest concern was the increased lines more than anything. We figured they would get the system glitches worked out, but realized that by adding fp+ to so many attractions that had never had it so there would be something to offer as a fp+, it was almost like an artificial demand was created for certain attractions. We also felt like the number of fp+ that were given out had increased as the fp+ return line on several attractions was beyond anything we had ever seen at any time of year.
Outside of not wanting to micromanage our vacations (we stopped really planning years ago), we just didn't like it and had an overall negative experience with it.
Fast forward to this past trip we went with as open a mind as possible. Again not a fan of having to plan everything out so far in advance (even caused arguments at home trying to devise our plan), but we did it and then the system blocked us, said we had limits that we shouldn't have had and in trying to fix the issues, DVC's intervention erased all of our reservations... It didn't start off with much hope of changing our opinion.
That said - we went and as anticipated the app worked better than before. Not great and we got multiple "blips" in the app and it was slow as Christmas, but way better than MLK weekend. We only had 2 band issues where it dropped our charging privileges once and wouldn't open the room on a second occasion. Considering we had 9 people with us the second week of the trip it wasn't too bad.
I really did like not having to rush to any park knowing that we didn't have to be anywhere until of first return time - that was nice. BUT if we had wanted to do more than our 3 headliners we would had to have gotten there by rope drop (which we don't do). We didn't have any luck with 4th fp+ mostly due to our group size and the tiering system at Studios and Epcot. We didn't really try to do much besides our reserved rides - if we had we would have been waiting in a ton of lines.
So my final opinion is...meh. I don't hate it like I did after MLK weekend, but I don't love it either. I really do think that if you want to really do the parks you have to hit rope drop. Since we aren't that family anymore what we can see and do has been limited. Crowd levels impact this of course, but with kids in schools when we can go is more limited. I really do think that fp+ has created longer lines for stand by and fp return. We experienced long fp+ return lines on virtually every attraction at every park - longer than there EVER was with fp-. I will say I still do not like the tiering system - if MK ever goes to that it will be a nightmare.
Ultimately I think it boils down to how a family likes to "do" Disney. We don't plan like crazy or go rope drop to park close so for us this hasn't been an improvement. I can see that for some folks it would be great. It isn't anything that will make us sell our DVC or what not, but I do see us doing other things and using our points other places. Overall I really have been disappointed in Disney lately, but that is a diatribe for a different day.
